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Help your daughter gain confidence and conquer challenges by encouraging her to participate in sports.

From the soccer field to the swimming pool, participating in sports can offer your daughter a multitude of life lessons, from learning crucial leadership skills to gaining new insights from her mistakes. In many ways sports are a microcosm of real life, and they’re one of the best ways to help your daughter prepare for challenges in her adult life, too. Here are some life lessons youth sports can teach your teen.

Lesson 1: Goal SettingSetting goals and working toward them is a learned behavior, one that can pay dividends later in life. By introducing new skill sets and complicated strategies and maneuvers, sports can teach your daughter how to set meaningful goals both on and off the field.

Lesson 2: PerseveranceWhether your teen reaches her goals or not, she stands to gain a lot from the process. Perseverance, or the ability to get up again after you’ve been knocked down, is one of the most useful life lessons anyone can learn. Dealing with rejection and disappointment within this context will teach your daughter to dust herself off and try, try again.

Tip: Your daughter’s period can get in the way of her practices and games. To help her keep going, have her try Always Radiant pads or Tampax Pearl Active tampons, which provide up to eight hours of leak-free protection. If she’s concerned about smelling fresh and preventing sweat on the track or field, give her Secret Outlast Xtend, with a pH-balanced formula that helps stop odor before it starts.

Lesson 3: LeadingGreat leadership skills can’t be taught from a book – they’re learned on the field, through hard work, sweat and even a few tears. If she’s part of a team, she’ll learn valuable leadership skills: how to communicate effectively with her teammates, resolve issues with others, hold herself accountable, rise above challenges or failure, and inspire others to give their best effort.

Lesson 4: FollowingLearning how to work as part of a team is just as important as learning how to lead. Sports will teach her how to take directions from a coach and follow a teammate’s lead during a game, which can help her in school and in her career later in life.

Lesson 5: Learning from MistakesNo matter what the level of competition, one thing is certain: Everyone makes mistakes. Messing up can be incredibly liberating, though, and it can teach your daughter how to see the upside of her missteps. If she can learn from her mistakes during the game, she can learn from the ones she makes in other areas of her life, too.

Lesson 6: ConfidenceMany girls quit sports during puberty, at a time when they could potentially gain the most from getting involved and staying active. The best way for your daughter to learn that being a girl puts no limits on what she can do is to keep playing! The newfound confidence she gains in the field will translate to other areas of her life, too.

Does your daughter play sports? What life lessons has she learned from participating? Share with the P&G everyday community in the comments section!

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